Our Monk in Rome

Impressions of Rome: Humor in Habit

Just as every school probably has its share of “class clowns,” many monasteries have their share as well. Possibly the same goes for Curias or Generalates, such as ours in Rome. I would like to recount some stories of “humor in habit” in this week’s posting. In the movie industry, visual collections of out-takes containing amusing mistakes, mayhem and the like, are usually called “gag reels,” and this is my modest version of the now popular genre. This one hundredth entry of “Our Monk in Rome,” seems a fitting moment for a “written gag reel.”

I arrived in Rome in January of 2017. Not long after that, our Abbot President asked me to accompany him on a fraternal visit to a monastery of Benedictine nuns outside of Rome, at “Civitela San Paolo,” said to be about an hour’s drive away. This trip was also to be the Abbot President’s first time driving our curia car. It takes nerves of steel, or close to it, to drive in Rome, but the abbot was ready and willing and we ventured forth that morning, GPS in hand for the excursion. Not far from Rome the GPS instructed us to take a right turn off the freeway, but in fact there was no possibility for an exit. It seemed there had been some changes in the road unbeknownst to the GPS. We carried on with the revised route from the GPS, but did not seem to be making progress. When we found ourselves going through the same toll booth at least three times, and paying the required fee, we knew something wasn’t right, and even considered giving up the ghost and returning home, since we seemed to be hopelessly lost. We did finally make it to Civitella San Paolo, in just under two hours, almost an hour later than planned. Fortunately we had left early enough, so did not arrive late for pranzo (lunch). The abbot and I had fun and laughed along the way, during our visit with the nuns, and on the way home, about being astray on the outskirts of Rome, but all’s well that ends well. If it had been filmed, it would have looked like a Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops film, popular fare from early 1900s. At least that is what the adventure reminded me of!

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One time a guest, named Jim, from the USA was staying at our curia, and one of the monks here asked another monk (neither of them from the USA), the last name of the visiting American guest named Jim. Without missing a beat, the monk being asked, having no idea of Jim’s last name, but just to give an answer, replied, “Morrison.” The other monk believed him. As an American, it really made me laugh that a young monk in Europe would immediately think of the rock singer, Jim Morrison, leader of “the Doors,” when hearing the name Jim!

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When asked why he kept his cell (bedroom) door open, day and night, a monk here said that if there were an earthquake, a common enough occurrence in Italy, it could happen that the door would be impossible to open, so the monk kept his door ajar at all times, for a possible rapid escape. Better safe than sorry, the monk explained.

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Recently two monks from our curia (one of them, the present writer of this piece), and two other monk-friends, who are studying in Rome, decided to visit a hotel near the Vatican, run by a religious Order of priests and brothers, as a possible lodging place for relatives of one of the monks, a family hoping to come to Rome in the next few months. After receiving instructions at the ground level front door of the hotel, all four monks entered the tiny elevator of the hotel, and proceeded to go up a couple of flights to meet the director of the hotel. Before reaching the desired floor, however, the elevator simply stopped and would not go up or down. It was only then that the four saw the notice inside the elevator, in English and Italian, “No more than two persons and two suitcases at a time in this elevator.”

The foursome stuck in the elevator laughed, then began to mildly panic about not being able to get the elevator to move up or down, and fretting as to how to get out of the elevator. After a few minutes, a worker in the building shouted that there was a way to open the inner door of the elevator, and even the outer door onto the almost-reached floor, though the elevator had actually stopped a few feet short of the floor. This was fortunate, since once the inner door and the outer door at the nearby floor were able to be opened from inside the elevator, the group could exit the elevator, by stepping up and out of the elevator, and on to the floor above. It was a bit of a “comedy of errors,” but all four were greatly relieved that they didn’t have to stay longer than they did in the elevator, and laughed about the adventure most of the way home.

Despite the unpleasant elevator experience, the monk whose family was coming to Rome, decided in favor of the hotel with the limited-capacity elevator, and reminded himself to tell his guest never to have more than two persons and two suitcases at a time in this particular elevator!

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On another occasion, a member of our curia asked the sacristan here about the cost of the flowers adorning our chapel on a particular liturgical Solemnity. The inquirer seemed curious about the price of the goods, perhaps wanting to know if funding had come from the meager coffers of the curia. Rather than giving a straight answer, knowing the flowers had been a gift to the curia, the one being asked simply quipped, “Cristo ha pagato,” (“Christ paid”), with a clever reference to Galatians 3:13, “Christ paid the price to free us.” Both had a good laugh over that, the questioner realizing that many good gifts come from the hand of God, and that “God loves a cheerful giver,” to quote 2 Corinthians 9:7.

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Recently, one of the monks of our curia, with a less than perfect command of the Italian language (in fact the author of this present essay), purchased at a local supermarket what he thought was a tub of margarine, only to find when he opened it and tried to spread it on bread at one of the meals, that he had bought a small tub of lard. Eventually there was a trip back to the store for the right product.

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I asked an Italian monk, who is in his early 40s, about a tune I kept hearing in Italian churches, either instrumental versions or with words, from Psalm 22(23), “The Lord is my Shepherd.” The monk explained that the tune was a “very old” one, implying antiquity. I asked from what century and he said, “from the 1960s.” That was de facto the last century, but hardly antiquity!

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One of our curia monks confessed his aspiration to lose weight and of his commitment to a serious exercise program. The monk was still deciding on a route to take for long walks, and it was suggested that he go to Circo Massimo, where the chariot races were held in ancient Rome, and go around the old race track for an optimum and undisturbed time of serious walking each day. When the monk expressed some distain about the walk to Circo Massimo itself, perhaps fifteen minutes away on foot, it was suggested by another monk that the potential exerciser take a cab to Circo Massimo, do his exercise walk at the former chariot track, and return again to our curia in a cab.

These are just some of the “tales from the curia” that help keep things light and memorable for one monk in Rome these past twenty-four months.